How are you guys liking the Surface Book?

jordan12

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 29, 2000
Messages
10,197
I am debating on getting one and was wondering if most of the bugs were worked out of it. Also debating on getting the one with the Dedicated graphics. Does that work well?
 
The dedicated graphics is about half as fast as a GTX 750 Ti: 384 shaders, 64-bit GDDR5. Know that before you get into it ankle deep.

You can't play new games even at 1080p, let-alone that screen's native resolution.

Also, the 3:2 screen sucks for everything except applications and web. Movies are pretty bad, and games expecting widescreen will leave you hanging.

See here for more user feedback:

My new Surface Book is amazing and yet disappointing, somehow...
 
The dedicated graphics is about half as fast as a GTX 750 Ti: 384 shaders, 64-bit GDDR5. Know that before you get into it ankle deep.

You can't play new games even at 1080p, let-alone that screen's native resolution.

Also, the 3:2 screen sucks for everything except applications and web. Movies are pretty bad, and games expecting widescreen will leave you hanging.

See here for more user feedback:

My new Surface Book is amazing and yet disappointing, somehow...


I guess I am still going to wait on the Asus Transformer pro 3 then. Thanks for the info though.
 
I guess I am still going to wait on the Asus Transformer pro 3 then. Thanks for the info though.

If you're okay with it having the exact same 3:2 form-factor problems as the Surface Book, and the fact that you'll never be able to game on the go, then I suppose it's worth waiting for.

Nobody is ever going to make a svelte and portable battery-powered Thunderbolt enclosure that has high performance, it's fighting physics. You'll be just as tied to your desktop with the external enclosure as you would if you just built a dedicated gaming box.

I don't understand this infatuation with running games on a tiny 12" 3:2 screen, all done through a crappy Thunderbolt cable with 1/3 the bandwidth of a x16 slot. Why not just have two boxes, and let them do their jobs well? You can even put the PC in a small MiniITX case if you want it to be less visible, or more portable.

LEt's start with your 12-inch convertable replacement, with SSD,

ASUS Transformer Book Chi T100 & T300

The T300 is under half the starting price of the Transformer Pro 3, and it's only failing is 4GB ram. I'm sure the other half of that PLUS the cost of the external Thunderbolt enclosure will go nicely toward a core i5 desktop with a top-end graphics card, and whatever big display you want.

If you do get an external Thunderbolt enclosure, you'll still have to troubleshoot it just like any other PC.
 
Last edited:
Some people only want one box to manage instead of two and will pay a premium for it. There is also some sort of an appeal for people who will work on that laptop by day and then come home, plug it into their Thunderbolt 3 GPU enclosure connected to a 27" 1440p g-sync monitor for gaming. All of ten people so far have expressed interest in this setup in the wild.

It seems like you are going to run into issues with dual-core U/Y-series processors being a bottleneck for gaming though, leaving you back at the more optimum solution of having two boxes.

Yes, I am saying this as the person who entertained the idea and got called out by you for it ;)
 
I've had my 16 GB/512 GB Surface Book since launch day. It's by far the best convertible laptop PC I've owned and I've owned a few over the years that were very pretty much in the in the same ball park price wise though the SB was most expensive in real dollars buy about $250 dollars. It's not a gaming machine but I've been surprised by how well many newer games run. Certainly not at native resolution and not even 1080P but 720P should work for many new games and low to medium settings. I think the display is great even for movies, I've watched a lot them on it and was perfectly happy with the experience.

To me the point is the convertibility. If that's not something you think you'll use or want then I wouldn't buy a Surface Book or any other convertible/2 in 1 laptop. But I use it a lot as pure tablet and in canvas mode with the tablet folded over the keyboard for note taking. The battery life is great, 8 to 10 hours on constant desktop work, web browsing, music playback. Good weight, pretty zippy, very nice pen experience. Something like Thunderbolt for GPU expansion would address the GPU gaming performance.

And there were the growing pains of drivers especially related to power. It seems like Microsoft got that nailed down about 3 months ago. Haven't had any issues with that in a while. Docking with an older HP 1920x1200 get's a little iffy. The power management for the monitor requires that I unplug the monitor and plug it in again to get come back on after sleep. But that's really the only mildly annoying thing these days.
 
I have serveral Pro 4's and will surely buy the next gen Book. The current one has some odd things about it. Like having a 745M GPU (I guess) and at the same time having a Iris GPU (i7 model) that is almost as good. I want the i7 without GPU, but they don't have that option, so I'm waiting for the next gen. I used someone elses for a day and it's by far the most invative laptop I have seen since one of my Toshiba's from 2002.
 
I have serveral Pro 4's and will surely buy the next gen Book. The current one has some odd things about it. Like having a 745M GPU (I guess) and at the same time having a Iris GPU (i7 model) that is almost as good. I want the i7 without GPU, but they don't have that option, so I'm waiting for the next gen. I used someone elses for a day and it's by far the most invative laptop I have seen since one of my Toshiba's from 2002.

I think a big part of it is thermals. Putting the dGPU in the keyboard takes a lot of heat out of the clipboard section when doing more demanding tasks.
 
The current one has some odd things about it. Like having a 745M GPU (I guess) and at the same time having a Iris GPU (i7 model) that is almost as good.
The Pro 4 i7 has the Iris GPU (i7-6650U) but the Book does not (i7-6600U)
 
I have the dgpu version of surface book but it's not used for games. I have an ASUS g750jh for that and a fulltower desktop. I use it for light work on the go due to great battery life and easy portability in a pelican 1550 case.
 
A few days ago my new calibrator arrived (Xrite i1 Photo Pro 2) and my measurements with the Spyder Pro 4 were indeed off a little. I can honestly say that the Surface Pro 4's have the best displays I have EVER seen in a laptop. Color accuracy is pefect and out of the factory there is no use in calibrating them (there is no difference between calibrated and not calibrated, which means they are already calibrated). I even did the calibration that takes thousands of colors to do the calibration (and takes 30 minutes) and even our oldest Surface (1 year old) still doesn't show any visible difference between the calibrated and uncalibrated view.

We also did our Macbook pro's and those show significant differences from device to device and really need a calibration after a few months (right out of the factory they are very well calibrated, but still show a noticeable improvement with doing your own calibration).
I'm really impressed because I really thought that Apple really nailed their screen calibration on every device I owned in the past.

Hopefully Microsoft can keep the display performance in the next generations.
 
Back
Top